The next in the row of contemporary German documents on homicidal gas vans misinterpreted by Santiago Alvarez (with Carlo Mattogno as special guest) is a letter sent by the chief of the administration in Serbia Harald Turner to Heinrich Himmler's personal assistant Karl Wolff of 11 April 1942 reporting that "I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp".

The Historical Context of the Letter

Turner under Wehrmacht Fire

In the first part of the letter, Harald Turner "comradely and heartily" thanked Karl Wolff for his "influence and tireless activity" which resulted in a certain "decision in my favour". The letter indicates that this is somehow related to "the installation of the Higher SS- and Police Leader" (i.e. August Meyszner) in Serbia. The background is elaborated in a letter sent by Turner's assistant Georg Kiessel on 31 March 1942 to Karl Wolff. Kiessel wrote that the Wehrmacht commander in Serbia was upset by the installation of the Higher SS and Police Leader. He considered two SS-Gruppenführer - Turner and Meyszner - in his sphere of influence as "unbearable", so that Turner has to "vanish". The Wehrmacht would attempt this by reducing his Administration Staff to a mere department (Hnilicka, Das Ende auf dem Balkan 1944/45, p. 178). Later the year, on 29 August 1942, Turner recalled towards Meyszner that Himmler had "deflected the attempt of the Wehrmacht to degrade my position because of your appointment" (Friedman, Die zwei intellektuellen SS-Generäle die verantwortlich waren für die Ermordung der Juden in Jugoslawien und in Danzig 1941-1943, hereafter only Friedman). Accordingly, this decision in favour of Turner was to keep the administration structure in Serbia as it was, with Turner as chief of the military administration staff. Turner expressed his thanks to Wolff for negotiating and supporting his case against the Wehrmacht commander.

The second part of the letter deals with the Jews in Serbia, more precisely with how to deal with Jewish POWs captured and interned by the Germans during their campaign in Serbia, when these have to be released and notice that their "relatives are no longer existing".

But why would the Serbian Jews have been disappeared in the first place, and how?

The Extermination of the Serbian Jews

During the anti-partisan warfare in Serbia in 1941, the German forces began carrying out reprisal shootings among the civilian population (100 Serbs for every German). These large scale killing activities escalated into the systematic extermination of the male Jews in Serbia.

Turner described these actions as following in a letter to Richard Hildebrandt:

"5
weeks ago I had put the first of 600 against the wall, since then we
whacked another 2000 during a clearing action, during another one about
1000 and in between I had 2000 Jews and 200 gypsies shot in the last 8
days, according to the 1:100 ratio for beastly murdered German soldiers
and another 2200, almost only Jews, will be shot in the next 8 days.
That's not a pleasant work! But at least it has to be done to show the
people what it means to even attack a German soldier and also the Jewish
question is solved most quickly in this way. Actually it is wrong, if
you are exactly, to shot 100 Jews for murdered Germans, for which there
should be a ratio 1:100 at the expense of the Serbs, but we had these in
the camp anyway - ultimately there are also Serbian nationals and they
also have to vanish."

(Turner to Hildebrandt of 17 October 1941, Friedman, my translation)

A few days later, Turner reported to Berlin that the "liquidation of the remaining male Jews" had been ordered by the military commander in Serbia (Manoschek, 'Serbien ist judenfrei', p. 107). Thus, the Germans had put the final nail in the coffin of the male Serbian Jews.

The fate of the remaining Jewish women, children and elderly was postponed in late October 1941 until "the technical possibility exists within the framework of the total solution of the Jewish question to sent the Jews to the reception camps in the East" (note of Rademacher from 25 October 1941, Eichmann trial exhibit T/883, cf. Curilla, Der Judenmord in Polen und die deutsche Ordnungspolizei 1939-1945, p. 80). The surviving Jews were interned in the Sajmište (Semlin) camp located near Belgrad at the rivers Save and the Danube, but still in the Independent State of Croatia. According to the reports of the German army, 6280 people were interned in the camp on 19 March 1942. 90% of those were estimated as Jews by the former camp commandant Herbert Andorfer (verdict against Andorfer, BArch, B 162 / 25912, cf. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, volume 31, p. 679, case no. 700) and at least 75% of the inmates were women and children (interrogation of Andorfer of 12 July 1967, BArch, B 162 / 25920, p. 66).

The German forces in Serbia were already experienced in large scale liquidations from the reprisal shootings and murdering of the male Serbian Jews, so it stood to reason to kill the remaining Jews on-site, instead of deporting them to Upper Silesia, the Generalgouvernement or the occupied Soviet territories just to do the same there. An obstacle to carry out the extermination by the military and police forces in Serbia was to cope with the strain on the firing squads. Although "the shooting of Jews is simpler than the gypsies", it became clear already during the execution of male adults "that this or that person does not have the nerves to carry out the shootings for a long time" (report of Hans-Dieter Walther from 4 November 1941). The killing of children and women in Serbia was, however, more conceivable with an impersonal mass murder method.

By this time, the motor pool department and the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police had already developed mobile gas chambers employing gasoline engine exhaust. The gas vans had been dispatched to the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territory and to Chelmno extermination camp since late 1941. In early March 1942, so he remembered at his post-war trial, the commander of the Security Police in Serbia Emanuel Schäfer received a telegram from the RSHA in Berlin informing him that a "task force with a special order is on their way by land with a special vehicle Saurer" for the "Jewish action in Serbia" (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, volume 11, p. 153).

The Saurer gas van was sent to the Sajmište camp to kill the remaining Jews of Serbia. The corpses were buried on a shooting range across the Save river on Serbian territory. The Security Police member Edgar Enge, who had to accompany some gassing actions, described the extermination process as following:

"For the
gassing of the Jews, the gas van drove into the camp without the escort.
About 50 Jews were loaded on it. The luggage was put on a separate
vehicle. The vehicles left the camp and met the escort at the so called
General-Weichs bridge passing over the Danube. The escort consisted of
two cars with about seven men (including drivers) and was provided by
the commander of the Security Police....The burial site was located on
the territory of the shooting range Avella [Avala]. The pits were already thrown
up at the burial area. As far as I remember, it was done by an Wehrmacht
engineer unit. The Jews were gassed during the drive. The distance
between the camp and the burial site was about 10 km. The task of the
escort was to make sure a smooth drive of the gas van...The vehicle
looked similar to a closed food vehicle. It had a door at the back,
which was further secured with a cross bar. The inside was lined with
metal sheet. There was a duck board on the ground, which could be
removed. The vehicle was cleaned on the yard of our office. This was done by the two gas van drivers."

"Several police men were present on the
shooting range in Avella [Avala]...The gas van drove close to the pit. After the
door was opened, one could notice that the corpses were usually located
more in the back of the vehicle. The prisoners transported the corpses
to the pits and covered them with earth."

(interrogation of Enge of 20 & 21 January 1966, BArch B 162 / 25920, p. 14f. & 17; my translation; note that Enge's description that the gassing was carried out while the gas van was driving is in contradiction to what is known how these vehicles operated according to numerous other sources. Likewise, Andorfer's testimony cited below suggests that the gassing was commenced right after the convoy passed the bridge across the Salve but still several km before reaching the shooting range. It seems as if Enge and Andorfer have distorted the gassing procedure - possibly because they were closely involved when the gassing was done while the vehicle was standing somewhere for several minutes. This hypothesis is weakened by the fact that Emanuel Schäfer already mentioned on 16 January 1952, way before he could have meant to protect Enge and Andorfer, that the "exhaust gas was lead into the inside during the drive" [Institut für Zeitgeschichte, ZS-0573, p. 6]. Alternatively, the vehicle may have been a technically modified variant)

The extermination of the Jews from Sajmište camp by means of the gas van was further described by the camp commandant Herbert Andorfer (interrogation of 12 July 1967, BArch, B 162 / 25920, p. 70ff.) and Karl Wetter of the Reserve Police Battalion 64 (interrogation of 24 November 1964, Manoschek, Serbien ist judenfrei, p. 180). Both the head of the Security Police in Serbia, Emanuel Schäfer and the Higher SS and Police Leader in Serbia August Meyszner confirmed the use the gas van to kill the Jews (interrogation of Schäfer of 12 May 1952, BArch, B 162 / 5066, p. 76; interrogation of Meyszner of 4 September 1946, Eichmann trial exhibit T896, p. 5).

The killing of the Jews was an excellent opportunity for Turner to brag towards Wolff about his ruthless attitude in solving the Jewish question in Serbia and to collect some extra points for his own, more and more escalating personal conflict with Meyszner (see letters exchanged between Himmler, Turner and Meyszner in Friedman). In the letter of question, he wrote to Wolff that

"Already
some months ago, I shot all Jews I could get my hands on in this
territory and concentrated all Jewish women and children in a camp and
with the help of the SD obtained a "delousing van", which will have
carried out the definitive clearing of the camp in about 14
days to 4 weeks..."

The "delousing van" was clearly an euphemism for the Saurer gas van dispatched to the Security Police in Serbia. The killing was finished before 9 June 1942, as Schäfer reported to the RSHA motor pool department that the "drivers SS-Scharführer Goetz and Meyer have carried out the special task" with their "special vehicle Saurer (see document 10 of Contemporary German Documents on Homicidal Gas Vans).

Indeed, the number of Jews in Sajmište camp quickly decreased from 4005 on 20 April to 2974 on 30 April, and the Jews entirely vanished by 1 July 1942 (verdict against Andorfer, BArch, B 162 / 25912, p. 22, cf. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, volume 31, p. 682, case no. 700). On 29 August 1942, Turner reported to the Wehrmacht commander of South-East that "the Jewish question, just like the Gypsies question was entirely liquidated (Serbia [is] the only country, in which the Jewish question and the Gypsies question [are] solved)" (Müller-Hill, Tödliche Wissenschaft: die Aussonderung von Juden, Zigeunern und Geisteskranken 1933-1945, p. 62, my translation).

In addition to those gassed prior 20 April 1942, the gas van had thus killed up to 4000 Jews within a maximum of 51 days. With a typical capacity of the Saurer gas vans of 50 to 75 people, the vehicle had to do 1 - 2 trips from the Sajmište camp to the Avala shooting range at the outskirt of Belgrad every day. After the extermination of the Serbian Jews was carried out, the "special vehicle" was sent back to Berlin on a train. It was first "thoroughly cleaned" and had to be repaired because of a cracked axle. On 13 July 1942, the repair and maintenance were completed. The "special vehicle" was ready for its next task and its dispatch to Minsk via Riga, where the commander of the Security Police Ostland had already requested "another S-wagon" with "exhaust hoses" for the "special treatment of Jews" (see document 11 of Contemporary German Documents on Homicidal Gas Vans).

Revisionist Arguments

Form, Style and Language of the Letter

According to the perception of the Holocaust denier Santiago Alvarez, the letter "is riddled with spelling errors, butchered German language, and nonsensical content" (Alvarez, The Gas Vans - hereafter TGV -, p. 87) and seems like an "imbecilic letter [written] on U.S. stationary with its phantasmagorical content" (p. 92). He compared its language against two other letters written by Turner, which are supposedly "grammatically correct, consistent, and make sense, quite in contrast to the letter at issue here" (p. 90). Although Alvarez does not explicitly claim the document a forgery, it is strongly suggested by his insinuations.

The fancy runic insignia of the SS - which Alvarez mocks as "toying around with his typewriter to compose some artistic rendering of the SS rune" (TGV, p. 92) - is characteristic for the letters he sent to the SS leaders Meyszner, Wolff and Himmler. He even used them in copies of Himmler's letters for his own files. Wolff remarked towards West-German investigators that this specially added SS-Runen "indicates his will to emphasise his belonging to the SS" (interrogation Wolff of 7 February 1962, BArch B 162 / 5025, p. 37; Wolff also confirmed the authenticity of the letter at this occasion).

Turner's letterhead as administration chief in Serbia showed only his civilian position "Staatsrat" (printed or stamped) but lacked his honorary SS-Gruppenführer (see his letter to Jovanovic of 4 April 1942). However, it was typical for him to add his SS rank by typewriter when writing to other SS leaders. The army postal service number 18739 on the letter belonged indeed to the military commander and administration staff Serbia, and the signature corresponds to that of Turner as well. David Irving claimed that the letter has a "non-German paper-size", which is rather meaningless since he was writing from abroad and may have used any non-standard paper size available on site. Alvarez says the letter was written on "U.S. letter format", his only source seems to be Irving telling him so. Alvarez even goes a step further and asserts that it was "a paper size which during the war was not available in Europe", but without providing any shred of evidence, this was indeed the case.

Comparison of the letter in question (left) with two other letters authored by Turner (middle and right). Notice a) the similar signatures (all), b) the self-made runic SS (left & middle), the addition of Turner's SS rank (left & middle), the postal field number (left & middle), the stamped or printed civilian title of Turner (all).

The inconsistent spelling and punctuation pointed out by Alvarez can also be found in Turner's other letters. This includes misspelling of ss/ß (e.g. Turner to Wolff of 30/10/42 "vergißt", "Haß"), false comma (e.g. Turner to Hildebrandt of 17/10/41, p. 5, 3rd line) and switching between spaces/no spaces before and after punctuation marks (e.g. Turner to Hildebrandt of 4/12/41).The English spelling of "Canada" was widely spread among Germans as can be seen from numerous German book titles published in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century (e.g. Schmieder, Länderkunde Nordamerikas: Vereinigte Staaten und Canada, 1933; Andree, Veschiedene Beiträge zur Geologie von Canada, 1914; Marryat, Die Ansiedler in Canada, 1904; Penk, Reisebeobachtungen aus Canada, 1898; Müller, Reisen in den Vereinigten Staaten, Canada und Mexico, 1864).

Alvarez is also wrong in his linguistic analysis that the term "möchte ich nicht verfehlen" is not correct German and is "probably [a] literal translation from English" (e.g. Wörterbuch deutscher Synonymen, 1871 p. 377). Turner's use of "allerdings" and "ich erinnere nicht" is typical German. The term "Dank übermitteln" to express ones own thanks, even if linguistically flawed, is not uncommon either even among academics (e.g. König, Briefwechsel, volume 1, p. 323). Turner made excessive use of modal particles in his letters, and specifically, the word "immerhin" was one of his favourites (e.g. in two subsequent sentences in Turner to Hildebrandt of 17/19/42; the letter was studied by Alvarez, but obviously not carefully enough to recognise his style).

In his discussion of the Jewish POWs, Turner referred the verb "dahinterkommen" to the wrong object (to "missing relatives" instead to "the missing of the relatives"). This is, however, a mistake also a native German speaker may miss at first thought. And it's not that Turner's other letters would not contain any flawed sentences once a while (e.g. Turner to Hildebrandt of 17/10/41 "verdammt schon hochbringen", Turner to Meyssner of 29/8/42 "die Hauptsache ,es würde gemacht .", Turner to Himmler of 30/10/42 "sie aus dem Verband der serbischen Staatswache...zu belassen").

The bottom line is that the letter of 11 April 1942 to Wolff corresponds well to Turner's style of writing. Moreover, it has the rubber stamp of Himmler's personal staff and handwritten notes from Wolff's personal assistant to pass on the letter to Rudolf Brandt confirming that the document was received by Wolff's office.

Content of the Letter

Alvarez starts straight away with a rather imbecilic remark. He wonders what the letter is talking about in the first four paragraphs and "[w]hat makes the author think that the recipient knew what he was writing about?" (p. 88). Guess what, because probably it's not the first time Turner or his staff corresponded and talked with Wolff. And probably, there had been only one big "decision" of interest for Turner favourable influenced by Wolff in the recent time. Alvarez seems to presume that people only write letters clearly explaining the context so that even outsiders without any historical knowledge can understand it 70 years later.

Speaking about it, Alvarez writes that "as far as I could verify, there is no historical event - some decision in favour of Turner and against some ominous 'Wehrmacht' interests - which would warrant such sentences". He further asserts that the letter got Himmler's title wrong ("SS leader" instead of "SS Reich leader") and that this decision was supposed to have influenced "all of Germany’s civil servants", which "sounds far-fetched to the point of being outrageous, and I could not find anything in the literature confirming this" (TGV, p. 88). Of course, all of this is supposed to support his forgery insinuation.

However, as pointed out in the previous section on the historical context of the document, the "decision" was clearly related to Turner's position within the civil administration in Serbia. It says volumes about Alvarez' commitment and research efforts to seriously understand this document that he did not manage to check out the relevant literature before drawing his broad conclusion.

Further, "SS leader" is not a false reference to Himmler, but a correct one to Meyszner. Turner used the term in the same sense in his letter to Meyszner of 29 August 1942. The gaffe is telling again. Alvarez writes a book on atrocities carried out mostly by the SS without having ever heard that "SS-Führer" was a common term for SS officers, in this specific case for SS-Gruppenführer. How much studying of sources was done here, you may guess.

And the "civil servants" mentioned were not those all of Germany, but only those working for the military administration in Serbia, who would have been undoubtedly affected by degrading their chief.

In short, if seen in its proper historical context, something Alvarez failed to do, this first part of the letter makes perfect sense.

On the second part, Alvarez dislikes that the letter speaks of "prisoners of war camp" in singular, when Turner raises the question what would happen when captured Jewish officers are released and find out that there are no more any Jews in Serbia - as if Turner would have cared about in how many camps the Jewish POWs had been brought to abroad. What did, however, Turner cared about is the predictable unrest when military-trained Jews find out that their relatives have disappeared. Alvarez doesn't get why, "since Jews are said to have been expendable anyhow" (TGV, p. 89). But that's very much the reason Turner himself uses in the very next sentences to disseminate this concern: once the released Jewish POWs previously protected by their status arrive in Belgrad, they are civilians and can be executed like the other Jewish civilians before.

Alvarez believes that he has spotted some wrong use of language in Turner's comment, supposedly saying something somewhat nonsensical like "when freed, they are free at the moment when they are free" (TGV, p. 90). However, he has simply misunderstood the sentence. Alvarez assumed that Turner meant to talk about the "arrival" of "freedom", whereas he actually referred to the real, physical arrival of Jewish POWs in Belgrad from abroad. The sentence makes perfect sense if one can just read it correctly.

Turner goes on that some might worry about "repercussions on our prisoners in Canada" when executing the released Jewish POWs. According to Alvarez, "the vast majority of German PoW camps in early 1942 were located in Britain and the U.S. It is therefore beyond comprehension why Turner should have mentioned them. Unless, of course, the author of this letter was Canadian." (TGV, p. 89).

The claim does not correspond to the facts, though. In early 1942, the largest contingent of German POWs captured by the British was not located in Britain, but in North-Africa, Canada and Australia. It is comprehensible that Turner mentioned Canada in his letter, because this is where the first big contingent of Germans was sent to and which would have been best known at the time, e.g. the year earlier, in March 1941, more than 80% of the German POWs captured by the British had been interned in Canada (Wolff, Die Deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in britischer Hand, p. 10).

Finally, Alvarez maintains that "in real life Turner was relatively 'soft' on the Serbs in general and on the Serbian Jews in particular and had no interest in having them executed. The letter analyzed here, however, gives the opposite impression" (TGV, p. 92). Yet, it is the same "hard" attitude Turner also displayed in his letter to Hildebrandt of 17 October 1941 (already quoted above), where he bragged about "I had 2000 Jews and 200 Gypsies shot in the last 8 days...by which the Jewish question is solved most quickly" or towards Himmler that "only because of my order the Einsatzgruppe of the Security Police and SD, as well as the police battalion, have for example carried out the execution of all male Jews and Gypsies in Belgrad" (Hory, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941-1945, p. 188). Turner's letter to Wolff reflects precisely the attitude he showed towards other SS leaders too - and whether this corresponded to his inner feeling and actual actions is entirely irrelevant here.

Of course, Alvarez would not be a Holocaust denier, if he were really following the evidence where it leads him. Despite the compelling evidence that the Jews from Sajmište camp were killed by the gas van and the absence of concrete evidence for true systematic resettlement, he insists that - because back in October 1941 the Germans were still considering a territorial solution - "so far no document is known which would have changed this decision to deport the Jews" and "unless such a document is found, we must, therefore, assume that 'clearance' of the camp was not equivalent with mass murder but rather with deportation".

The other way round, since there is very concrete evidence that the Jews in Serbia were mass murdered by the Germans, including this letter Turner to Wolff, one can conclude that the decision to deport the Jews was dismissed after October 1941. In other words, since the extermination was done, it had also been decided. The German records are far from being complete to rule out such a decision on documentary grounds. Alvarez also fails to explain why Turner used air-quotes on the "delousing van", if it was really a vehicle for delousing, or why it was the "delousing van" that was actually clearing the camp of people, or why Wolff is supposed to have bothered Wolff with a mere delousing van when the real obstacle for resettlement was transport and accommodation capacity. Or why a "delousing van" was a matter for the German Security Service to begin with.

Furthermore, it was actually the "delousing van" which carried out the clearing of the camp from people, which is inconsistent with the explanation that it was merely used for delousing clothing. Unless of course, the clothing was still on the people during the delousing process and they were indeed homicidally gassed.

Conclusion

Santiago Alvarez's critique of the letter Turner to Wolff of 11 April 1942 as a dubious document is merely a string of historical, linguistic and wilful ignorance without any rational justification whatsoever. Carlo Mattogno has wholeheartedly relied on Alvarez, whose book he "helped to improve...by critically reading an earlier version of it" (TGV, p. 12). Although I would expect Mattogno's historical knowledge and command of German to be slightly better than this, he did not spot any of Alvarez's numerous gaffes either. Indeed, why would he critically read Alvarez when he arrived to a conclusion fitting to his own pre-fabricated Holocaust denial. It is also an instructive example of how carelessly Mattogno brushed away powerful evidence opposing his denial agenda in his alleged "Analysis and Refutation...of the 'Holocaust Controversies' Bloggers".

The document in question is formally authentic. If it were a forgery, it would be a perfect forgery, which is already unlikely itself, but of course, also failing to support the forgery insinuation. Moreover, its content is plausible, neatly fits into the historical context and is corroborated by numerous evidence. Thus, the letter is evidently an authentic contemporary German document reporting the killing of Jews in the Sajmište camp with a gas van.

__________________________
Changelog
28 April 2016: corrected typo in the year of Wolff's cited interrogation, see comments.

"The phrase “no longer existing kinfolk” reads in the original German “nicht mehr vorhandenen Angehörigen.” The verb “vorhanden sein” can mean both “to exist” and “to be present.”

This ignores the sentence in which the phrase appears:

"Then the time is come in which the Jewish officers to be found in prisoner of war camps under the Geneva Convention find out against our will about their no longer existing kinfolk and that could easily lead to complications."

Turner is here referring to the threat that German POWs will be killed in reprisal for Jews killed in German camps.

-BROI:Any discussion of Wolff's numerous special arrangements with Allen Dulles in that interrogation? Arrangements that ensured Wolff wouldn't be tried if Dulles could help it.

He doesn't know when to quit, does he?

It's already been demonstrated that there's no way the Soviets falsified the Holocaust simply because their policy was the opposite. The same thing was true for the Anericans: They didn't falsify the Holocaust either. Their priority was the cold war, and to that end they recruited former SS men like Wolff in order to have access to the intelligence networks they set up during the war. Any "special arrangements" between Dulles and Wolff should be seen in this context, instead of BROI's baseless insinuation that he cut a deal with Dulles and the Jews when it's far more likely that his crimes were swept under the rug to begin with.

This policy is evident in the fact that the US commuted the sentences in the Malmedy massacre, and the following statement from the cheif US prosecutor at the time, which BROI onmitted for very obvious reasons.

He says he has never, however, had any moral qualms about his actions. "I never gave it much thought after the war," he says. "The point is: What do you do with these guys? The war crimes courts were already backlogged with more senior Nazis. The jails were full. They were going to slip through the cracks." -

The overwhelming majority of the lower-level SS guards did in fact escape justice.

- Ferencz prosecuted members of the Einsatzgruppen. "There were 3,000 members of these killing squads who did nothing but kill women and children for three straight years," he says. "These 3,000 men alone were responsible for almost 1 million murders. Do you know how many I brought indictments against? Twenty-two. The rest were never tried.

Wolff verified it of his own free will because it was true, not because of any blackmail or threats. The cheif US prosecutor made it clear that blackmail or threats were never part of the agenda to begin with.

Jeffrey—once again waving his favourite newspaper clipping about—accuses me of having "onmitted [sic] for very obvious reasons" details of the sentences from the Malmedy trial in a short question about Karl Wolff and Allen Dulles. Two men completely uninvolved in either the incident or the trial! Utterly bizarre. Take your meds, Jeffrey.

Academic studies detail how even the most senior Nazis tried at the IMT were offered deals to induce the *right sort* of testimony about former colleagues:

"[William] Donovan was also developing a controversial plan to allow Schacht, and even Göring, to benefit from a type of plea bargaining 'deal' under which they would improve their legal position by giving dramatic evidence against former colleagues within the Nazi leadership circles. If Dulles was aware of this, then it may have supported the conclusion that Donovan was hardly averse to the broad principle underpinning Dulles' suggestion. In August 1945, Donovan's organisation was fighting for its institutional life. Hence, its public relations office was using the 'success' of Operation Sunrise as part of its media campaign to offset this threat of dissolution. In this context, it is reasonable to assume that Donovan would have, as far as possible, acted on Dulles' suggestion. The last thing Donovan needed was for a war crimes trial, which — as already noted — the OSS had actively supported, to hear a high-profile case involving testimony that was highly damaging to the reputation of this intelligence agency, and — by implication — to that of Donovan himself.

Unfortunately, but not really surprisingly, the extent to which General Donovan intervened personally to exert pressure on US Chief Prosecutor Justice Jackson to exempt Wolff is not recorded in archival records that the CIA have presently declassified. Had Donovan refused Dulles' request, then it is possible that there would have been an accessible chain of declassified correspondence giving his reasons. It is most likely that Donovan was the person Dulles was referring to amongst 'the top people' monitoring developments regarding Wolff on Dulles' behalf. Given this hard evidence of Donovan's cooperation, there is no obvious reason why he would not have extended such assistance further by exerting pressure on Jackson to exclude Wolff from the international trials. Certainly, there is no evidence that Donovan ever withdrew this support, or had any overriding reason to do so."

- Michael Salter, Nazi War Crimes, US Intelligence and Selective Prosecution at Nuremberg: Controversies Regarding the Role of the Office of Strategic Services, Routledge, 2007, pp.125-126.

Actually, academic studies are aware of the fact that the US was gearing up for the cold war. And that the mentality was that since the Germans had the best experience in fighting the Soviets, they would be best able to help the US in doing so. Which explains BROI's latest spam which he's too thick to understand himself.

The entire premise of Holocaust denial is false. No one faked the Holocaust. Not the US, not the Soviets, not anyone.

One of the things that Holocaust deniers gloss over is Stalin's own anti-Semitism surfacing after the war. While the USSR initially backed the creation of Isreal in hopes of creating a Middle-Eastern ally, this turned after Isreal became closer to the US. The USSR consistently backed Isreal's enemies in the region. Stalin purged prominent Jews from his government, including Molotov's wife. Stalin encouraged the purge of prominent Jews from the Eastern Block and appeared to be gearing up for another Great Purge when he died.If the Holocaust was initially a "hoax" that the Soviets supported after the war, why bother to continue with it after the beginning of the Cold War and Stalin's own paranoid delusions about Jews surfaced?

Dulles protected people who helped bring about the German surrender in Italy. These included not just Wolff but also Harster and Rauff, as noted in these letters from 1966 and 1967:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1967/03/09/good-nazis/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1966/12/29/beginning-the-cold-war-1/

The evidence Wolff gave to the West Germans in 1962 was despite the attempts of Dulles to protect him, not because of it. They had the highly incriminating correspondence with Ganzenmueller on deportation to Treblinka, which Wolff could not evade. The West Germans were ignoring the CIA and doing their own legal cases. Thus even though Wolff authenticated the Turner letter, he still received a 15 year sentence.

-Dr. Harrison: Dulles protected people who helped bring about the German surrender in Italy. These included not just Wolff but also Harster and Rauff, as noted in these letters from 1966 and 1967:-

In other words, the US protected people because of their own political agendas, and not because of any sinister Jewish influence as BROI loves to insinuate.

About Rauff, that wasn't the end of it. IIRC, the US helped him escape to Chile, where Augusto Pinochet's regime blocked attempts to extradite him. The American Backed Augusto Pinochet protected a man wanted by Israel and West Germany. And yet we're supposed to believe that the US worked in concert with the Jews to falsify the Holocaust.

It's over. Aside from the fact that the Revs haven't been able to prove their "resettlement" BS, there's the fact that the whole Premise of "Revisionism" is false to begin with. No one faked the Holocaust. Not the Soviets, not the US, not the Germans, not anyone

There is no pressing need for a point by point refutation. Only an idiot would find something like this persuasive.

E.g. at 2:10 he raises an obvious strawman: if the Germans [sic] wanted to kill all the Jews, why did any survive? Usually only a pure ignoramus would ask a question like that. I mean, read a book or two on the Nazi policy. Or think for a minute. But Hunt is not a total ignoramus, hence he's a fraud. The questions thereafter, including hospitals and bakeries in ext. camps, are in the same vein. He then engages in lying at around 5:20 when he juxtaposes the two changing camp death tolls with the "six million" figure, never bothering to show why the former should have influenced the latter (the Auschwitz plaque, for example, never said that those were 4 million *Jews*).

IOW it's pure cheap propaganda for the rubes made by a mentally unstable felon, the core of which has been debunked a long time ago. He pulls at the rough edges of the historical narrative (like human soap, lampshades, Dachau gas chambers, etc.) which do not actually have great significance for the Holocaust history, never trying to prove his more grandiose claims, never addressing the *actual* evidence and never explaining the location of the missing Jews.

You might as well ask us to do a point by point refutation of the Moon Landing Hoax or Trump's claim that Ted Cruz's dad was part of the JFK assassination plot. We refute Mattogno because there's at least a facade of doing some research in his scribblings. Not so Eric, Werdo, Hannover and other cling-ons.

We did engage the Ugly Voice once, but even his videos, although pretty much brain-dead, were more encompassing and "challenging", if you will. Hunt is a pale shade of the Ugly Voice. He brings nothing new to the table. He's a failure even as a denier.

Eric Hunt is nothing but a liar. E.g. he edited Heinz Rosenberg's testimony about working in the boiler room at the German Barracks in Minsk to make it sound like he was discussing showers in Treblinka. He's worthless.

www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22911&start=40#top

If Hunt rhymes with bothers Ryu and Bhigr so much, maybe they can do their own work and call out his BS, instead of depending on others to do it for them.

You know, it takes a certain amount of willful ignorance for someone to mouth off about "Allied Propaganda" in a thread where another, more informed person explicitly said that "Dulles protected people who helped bring about the German surrender in Italy"

It would absorb time and effort better spent on other priorities which are more interesting to pursue than Hunt's creepy and deranged shit. That's why we don't respond to Hargis or Werdo anymore, for example.

So the stories about lampshades made out of Jewish skin were not Allied Propaganda? The use of Allied bombing victims in Nordhausen as proof of a deliberate extermination policy of the Nazis was not Allied Propaganda? All this is false? I'm just asking.

A) The well was right next to this building, which as described in the November 1942 report which had terra cotta tiles, elaborate piping, and water heater. This description, of looking exactly like a shower room with terra cotta floors is repeated again by a Jew, Abraham Krzepicki, who went by there with many others several times to fetch water. This building was a REAL SHOWER.

B) This was a homicidal gas chamber connected to a diesel engine, although diesel engines are terribly inefficient at killing people. There was a well next to this top secret gas chamber complex for no good reason, where prisoners from all over the camp came on different work duties to get water and be inches away from Jews getting gassed by the roomful, or even look inside when it wasn't in use. The remains of the almost 1 million gassed here mostly blew away."

Really, using the diesel gambit after we've positively shown in our white paper that a petrol engine was used? (Not to mention all the other BS, like "almost a million" victims or there being only 1 well in Treblinka). The boy is damaged beyond repair.

Arguing with Hunt would be like playing chess with a pigeon: no matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon will just knock the pieces over, shit on the board, and strut around like it's victorious.

First of all I didn't spam and I didn't make insinuations by posing questions. I merely asked whether certain aspects of Hunts video are true. That's not jaqing off. That's to the point, namely Allied war Propaganda. It's Sad that an honest discussion is not possible here.

No, sorry, you were spamming. Your initial question concerned our rebuttal to Hunt. We've explained why you shouldn't expect one (which is not to say that we won't do it; it just wouldn't have a high priority for us, to put it mildly). We've also shown that Hunt is a liar, including several of the points made in that same video. You have completely ignored these points and went on on listing all the *other* points you want us to address, even after I told you to stop JAQing off. It was pure spam at that point.

The thing is, whether or not some or other "exhibit" was in the propaganda territory has no relation to the question of the Holocaust. Just as showing that Katyn was used as propaganda by the Nazis bears no relation to the question of whether Katyn was real. Suppose you show that the soap and the lampshades were propaganda. Oh gee, you've shown that there was propaganda! Something in which every side of any war engages. I.e. a given. You are still not a step closer to dealing with the actual evidence (or to showing that *this* evidence constitutes propaganda). Note that "there was propaganda, therefore all the evidence I don't like is propaganda" is not a valid argument.

I'll take this back to gas vans by pointing out that bhigr, like Alvarez, is simply repeating a mantra that "propaganda existed in WW2 therefore we can wave away any document or testimony because it 'could' have been produced by whatever machine produces propaganda." This is as lame as saying that the USA uses propaganda against Al Qaeda and ISIS (that is undoubtedly true) therefore every bombing, beheading or mass execution carried out by these groups could be a false flag and/or hoax, irrespective of the evidence that exists for it being done by AQ/ISIS.

Hans' series has shown that HD is not much more than this fallacy. We demand a lot more from deniers if they want to sustain a conversation on here.

Indeed, another fallacy at heart here is that propaganda amounts to lying or to wholesale fabrication. This ignores the fact that the best propaganda is truthful.

Katyn was propaganda on the Nazis' part (and they lied quite a lot about it in fact, if you care to examine their claims - although they did get the core right), but it also happened. The Danzig human soap itself was absolutely real - it was just blown out of proportion as propaganda (it wasn't a part of the Nazi policy). And so on. Keeping propaganda as well as the fog of war in mind is actually pretty useful for explaining some of the exaggerations that happened, incl. the 4000000 death toll. And it is also not that hard to separate the wheat from the chaff for fair-minded and honest researchers. Which deniers demonstrably are not.

To sum up: Any real atrocity will be used for propaganda. That doesn't make the atrocity unreal.

Gas vans certainly were used as propaganda too - e.g. through the two Soviet trials - and they were undoubtedly real (as Hans' presentation, among other things, conclusively demonstrates).

Hunt has been conclusively discredited in just about every way. His Treblinka video was found to be more or less a complete fabrication from start to finish, where the "evidence" he used was not in keeping with his "thesis" after independent vetting. We must assume that all of his "videos" are similarly unreliable.